“There is a Lot of things I can’t do anymore, but killing isn’t one of them”: Visual Representation of Female Serial Killers in the U.S. Culture

Abstract

“The great American art form isn’t music or film or television. The great American art form is murder. We watch it, we celebrate it, obsess over it” Based on a true story (2023), episode 1 In the last three decades, the figure of the serial killer has become a sensation in the United States, a personality for the media to obsess over and turn into a celebrity to be worshipped. The term “serial killer” entered the American popular employment in 1981 and, given it was first employed to define a male serial killer, men have always been perceived as more “notorious” (or, rather, “infamous”) than their female counterparts. Female-perpetrated murder is a rare occurrence, all the more when the murder is born out of motives or carried out with means that do not meet the ones stereotypically associated with femininity. Given the lack of research in this regard, the aim of this dissertation is to examine media representations of female-perpetrated serial murder by taking into consideration two instances of queer, mentally ill and unattractive female serial killers. The cases this study will be focused on concern the earliest-registered U.S. female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, and the latest fictionalized representation of female-perpetrated serial murder in the United States, Andrea Greene, protagonist to Amazon Prime Video’s series Swarm.